How Not To Betray Jesus Series

• The name Judas Iscariot is one of the most famous in the Bible, for all the wrong reasons. Judas is synonymous with betrayal.

Back in 1986 the footballer Mo Johnston was called the greatest Judas in Scottish football because he made the unthinkable switch, moving from Glasgow Celtic, and all it stands for, to Glasgow Rangers and all it stands for. For many passionate Old Firm fans, that is a divide you simply don’t cross.

But Mo Johnston did cross it, and became the first catholic to ever sign for Rangers. I was reading an article about Mo Johnston in the Daily Telegraph recently where he said that it’s only now, 29 years after he made his fateful decision to switch from Celtic to Rangers, that he feels safe to walk the streets of Glasgow.

Now of course that’s only betrayal in football terms, albeit with deeply sectarian underpinnings. The real Judas story is a much darker version of betrayal. Not moving from one football team to a near rival, but betraying the Son of God. Judas’ story is very dark indeed. So dark in fact that I have been puzzling about exactly how to preach it.

Why is this passage in the Bible? What are we meant to learn from Judas? Well, it’s here to warn us that we cannot trifle with the person of Jesus. That betraying Jesus is the worst possible thing we could do.

But we also find in this passage, not just a warning, but also an antidote to betraying Jesus. What are the attitudes of Judas that led to him betraying Jesus? What are the attitudes we need to adopt that will keep us from betraying Jesus.

? And I want to pick out 4 attitudes from this passage, that we need to adopt, that will keep us from betraying Jesus. Firstly

• A readiness to repent (21)

• A few times already in this passage, Jesus has dropped a hint that one of his disciples will betray him. But now Jesus spells it out (v.21) ‘After saying these things, Jesus was troubled in his spirit, and testified, ‘Truly, truly I say to you, one of you will betray me.’

? He didn’t actually name the perpetrator, he just announced that someone would betray him, which led to a lot of soul searching among the disciples, and soul searching itself can be a positive thing.

o And of course Jesus also wanted to prepare his disciples for the trauma they would go through in the next few hours as they watch their Lord being taken away in the Garden through a betrayer’s kiss, and nailed to a cross.

o The disciples needed to know the trauma was not an accident, that Jesus knew all about Judas’ treachery in advance.

But the main reason Jesus announced the betrayal publicly was to give Judas the opportunity to repent. Both Jesus and Judas knew the plans in Judas’ heart, and this was one last chance for Judas to change his mind, to come clean, to turnaround from his road to destruction, and rethink his calamitous decision.

And Jesus offers all of us the chance to repent of whatever sin or sins we have committed. Even if our sins are on the most grievous scale. You can’t get much darker than being willing to betray the Son of God. That takes a particular kind of dark heart.

But as the hymn says ‘there’s a way back to God from the dark paths of sin.’ But we need to have a readiness to repent.

We don’t know if Judas ever thought of repenting. After he had done his dastardly deed, he was full of remorse, and threw the money back at the Chief Priests who had concocted the plan with him. But his remorse wasn’t repentance. It was a kind of fatalism. And he went and hanged himself.

It was a tragedy, but that tragedy could have been avoided at any point if Judas had been willing to repent.

Jesus’ forgiving arms would have been more than ready to welcome him.

He forgave tax collectors their fraud, he forgave prostitutes their immorality, he forgave Paul his murders, he forgave Peter his denial, and Thomas his doubting.

And throughout church history, there have been many scoundrels who have discovered the overwhelming mercy and grace of God. St Augustine had fathered several illegitimate children, and abandoned his girlfriend before God’s grace caught up with him.

John Newton was a slave trader who had even been involved in rape before he found Christ and wrote the world’s most sung hymn, ‘Amazing Grace’. Many of you will have read the stories of Nicky Cruz the violent gang member in New York converted through David Wilkerson’s courageous evangelism.

Or Jacky Pullinger’s unique ministry among drug addicts in Hong Kong, and some of the incredible conversion stories there. We recently mentioned Charles Colson, sent to prison for abuse of power in the Watergate scandal, who repented in prison, and became the head of Prison Fellowship, reaching millions of prisoners for Christ.